An Iraq War veteran has a new outlook on life after undergoing life-changing surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and on Tuesday he shared his story.

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Brendan Marrocco, 26, is a courageous and upbeat man who loves life. As an infantryman defending his country in Iraq in 2009, he lost all four limbs during a roadside bomb attack.

Last month, a team of doctors from Johns Hopkins, the Curtis National Hand Center at Medstar Union Memorial Hospital, Walter Reed and UCLA performed a 13-hour operation. Marrocco received two arms from one donor.

"It's given me a lot of hope for the future," Marrocco told reporters six weeks after the surgery. He said the arms feel like they're his arms.

"I can rotate a little bit. This arm, not much yet, but I aim to get good functioning out of it," Marrocco said.

The surgery involved connecting tendons, bones, blood vessels, muscles, nerves and skin. It is being called the most complicated limb transfer in the U.S. In order to stop rejection, doctors developed a treatment to cut down on the amount of drugs he has to take. Many times, anti-rejection drugs can cause infection and organ damage, doctors said.

"Brendan received bone marrow cells from the arm donor so that he will take one anti-rejection medication instead of the usual triple cocktail," Dr. Andrew Lee explained.

Over the next two years, it will be his full-time job to undergo hand therapy every day for six hours. Nerves regenerate at the rate of one inch per month, doctors said, so it will be months and years before function returns.

Marrocco said he's ready to take it all on and has a message for other amputees.

"Do not give up. Life gets better. You are still alive, and be stubborn. There are a lot of people who say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway," he said.